My blog is for my AS level coursework where i'll be analysing title sequences and showing planning with research for my own title sequence.

Wednesday, 13 January 2016

Title Analysis : Se7en In the title sequence for ‘se7en’ it starts off with thunder
which is metonymic for apocalyptic weather, which is unsettling and there are
loud beats of a drum which is frightening to anyone as the fear of loud noises
haunts us all. The occasional beats resemble a heartbeat, as they beat twice and then beat again twice with a little break. There’s a close up of a mistreated and beaten book which is
mysterious because it leaves the audience thinking, what’s in the book? The
condition in which the book is in gives the audience a quick glimpse into how
the person lives. It’s evident that he’s messy, unhygienic and doesn’t buy
everyday things like a note book often, so the one he owns is worn and
decrepit. The slow beating drum and slow beat music builds suspense as it’s
eerie and unusual compared to the average lullaby, making it unnatural for the
ears.

There’s the use of the colours black and white mostly in
this title sequence, with the white handwritten and scruffy looking font on the
pitch black background and most shots throughout the sequence are filtered with
a black and white effect to give it a dull and morbid look. The fonts shake
around and flash on the screen with a grainy texture to them and the picture
itself giving the sequence a film-stock home movie effect, or an out dated and
old look to go with the theme that the person does not leave the house. There’s
a picture of a pair of distorted hands, almost disfigured in their appearance
which gives an eerie element of self-taught human anatomy, ultimately giving it
a harrowing feel. The sequence goes on to then show another close up of dry and
worn fingers with semi-long finger nails with dirt underneath, emphasising the
gritty feeling and lack of hygiene, which is mostly discarded by modern day
society as it’s not the social norm nor civilised.

Pace of the soundtrack eventually increases and gets louder
with the occasional electronic interference/screech which is uncanny and
unnatural to hear adding to eeriness of the scene. This screech resembles a very conventional record player in older horror films, but is done to an extent that it's almost a new type of sound.

The only part of the character we see in the title sequence is his hands and he has worn and dry plasters that seem to have been in use for a while, exaggerating the lack of hygiene and leave the audience connecting the plasters with an earlier scene in the sequence where he is cutting of dead skin with a razor blade, which is also symbolic of a weapon. There's usually more than one picture in a shot/frame, often resulting in many images layering over one another which gives the audience a sense of montage to imply time is passing. In the sequence the audience has a glimpse of a 'red-room' where old Polaroids are developed as well as other photo's which is quite old fashioned and out dated implying he is maybe less in ouch with society and more isolated and the macabre impression that he could possibly stalk people.

The character sticks in a picture of what appears to be a dead woman and a picture of a male with some kind of torture device in the back of his head,into a book with a similar style to that of a scrapbook, sticking the picture in with tape which is a messy way to present things and implying that this could most definitely be a hobby of his. There's a silhouette of the characters hand holding a pen through the sheets of paper as it gets turned, being an iconic reference and great example of intertextuality as it resembles the shower scene from 'Psycho - Alfred Hitchcock, 1960'. As the sequence goes on, the character sticks in another picture of a little boy this time, but to then cross his eyes out with a black marker to dehumanise him, creating a preternatural feeling. At this point the pace of the soundtrack increases as well as the cuts becoming more frequent, making it faster paced creating more tension. This is then followed by a close up of the male feeding a needle thread which immediately turns some heads as there's a common fear of needles but the thread itself is fraying which implies its old or maybe even re-used to then create a home made book by connecting the papers together.

Fonts in this sequence are very contrary, one is handwritten and messy and the other one is a type writer. Both being equally eerie as it's not modern and is generally quite generic of horror films to have, although in my opinion i feel the hand written font is something of its own kind. The sequence is then ended with what seems like hand held footage as the camera is shaky and then the audience is shown lots of files next to one another making the audience think if they're profiles of people, victims or worse leaving mystery. To then further how horrifying and weird the male is, there's a close up of him placing a locket of hair into a plastic pocket, maybe as a trophy? In the final scene of the sequence, the audience is shown that the character is cutting the word 'God' out of the Dollar note to possibly defy God.